


All on the Threshold

by theswearingkind



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M, Mpreg, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2013-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-28 21:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/996985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theswearingkind/pseuds/theswearingkind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Justin is really skinny, so it's not like no one will notice when he starts to bloat.  Or, like, go into labor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All on the Threshold

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for slashfest, in 2007, [](http://violaalto.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://violaalto.livejournal.com/)**violaalto** 's prompt of: " **Justin/Brian** \- Everything is the same up until the Vermont trip. Justin finds out that he is pregnant a week before and is waiting to tell Brian until they get up there. After the disapointment with the trip and his birthday Justin starts to really question if Brian loves him. Until then he had always truly believed that he did. Justin never cheats w/ Ethan who is actually an old friend of Justin's who just helps cover for him. Justin decides that it would be better if he just left because he thinks that it would be better for Brian to never know because Justin thinks that he will just be doing his duty and also that Justin was trying to trap him. Justin at this point has finally given up and has admitted that they are not really in a relationship. After the big break up the gang is a lot meaner. Justin's decides to leave the city and move to Philadephia where he has family. He quits his job at the diner but on his last day there he faints and is rushed to the hospital and everything comes out."
> 
> Title from Christina Rossetti's poem "A Triad."

Justin throws up every morning for two weeks before he’s willing to admit that it’s not food poisoning. Or flu, or a stomach virus, or trichinosis or Ebola or salmonella or anything else Deb tries to diagnose him with. There’s really only one thing he can think of, but that’s not—he’s safe. He’s always safe, so it’s not that, either. It’s not.

It’s something else. It has to be something else.

“Not some _thing_ ,” the clinic doctor corrects him, smiling in an official way as she scans the results of his blood work. “Some _one_. Congratulations, Mr. Taylor. You’re pregnant.”

*

“Pregnant,” Ethan repeats.

“Six weeks along,” Justin replies calmly. “I don’t really want to talk about it just yet. I’m still processing.” They’re having lunch at some little café near Ethan’s school that specializes, apparently, in horrible coffee and worse sandwiches. Justin is having neither, because the sandwiches are really and truly just that bad, and the coffee is caffeinated, which the doctor made very clear was not allowed. It’s one of those things he’ll just have to get used to.

“Huh,” Ethan says finally. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

It could be just that easy, Justin imagines, if it weren’t for Brian.

*

Justin gets back to the loft early in the afternoon. He has the place to himself, and he immediately strips nude, standing in front of the long bathroom mirror and checking with his artist’s eyes for any sign of variance in his abdomen—a curve or swell not present a few days ago, any softening over the hips.

There’s nothing, really; he’s still as slim as he’s ever been, skin stretched tight over his hipbones, the flat lines of his abs. He wonders how long he has before he starts to gain weight, to lose the body that he thinks of his and find a new one, meant for sharing.

It feels a little like an intrusion, having this baby inside of him; like a stranger reading the pages of his diary, if he’d ever bothered to keep one. It’s ridiculous, he knows, because he’s an artist, he puts himself on canvas and paper every day for the whole world to see, but this is different because it’s actually him; it’s really, truly, _physically_ him, it’s his body, and suddenly he doesn’t have control over it anymore.

The control has always been a part of it. It was part of him being more fucking brave than almost anyone he’d ever met, having the guts to admit what he wanted and then just go out and get it—when he was _seventeen goddamn years old_. (At the time he’d felt ancient, like he’d been trapped in his skin for so unbelievably long, but two years and ten lifetimes later, Justin recognizes just how much of a kid he’d really been, to blindly believe that he was going to get what he wanted, just like that.) Justin had never wanted to sleep with some girl just because he felt like he had to, just so he could feel like every other kid in his school; he wanted to fuck whoever he wanted, just because he wanted to. He wanted to be in control of his life and his dick, and so he found Liberty Avenue.

And now he doesn’t have that control, not really, not in any way that counts. He could give the baby up for adoption or have an abortion, even, and he still wouldn’t be in control, because his body did this all on its own, without his permission, without informing Justin first. Justin thinks of the last time he lost control of his body, of baseball bats and blood and darkened parking garages, and how his hand still freezes up sometimes, one more thing he can’t control.

*

Brian gets to the loft ready to fuck. Justin doesn’t have a problem with that.

The problem is that Brian doesn’t want to fuck Justin. At least, not only Justin.

Justin could pitch a fit, queen out with the best of them, but then he thinks of Vermont, of a whole week in which Brian fucks no one but him, and it puts him in an obliging mood. He smiles and tells Brian to wake him up when he gets back from Babylon.

Brian presses his thumb against Justin’s bottom lip. “And just why should I do that?” he asks, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. Justin sucks Brian’s thumb into his mouth, twists his tongue around it. “Ah,” Brian says, like he’s made a great discovery.

Justin pulls back, letting the thumb slip out of his mouth with a wet pop. “Preview of coming attractions.”

Later, much later, he wakes up to an arm curling around his chest. “Brian?” he murmurs. “What time is it?”

“2:58,” Brian mumbles back, his body a long hot line next to Justin’s.

“Saved by the bell, hmm,” Justin sleep-whispers. Somewhere in the back of his mind are Vermont and snow and quiet, and only the three of them there to share it all. Unconsciously he thinks, _in Vermont, once we’re in Vermont_.

*

Of course they don’t make it to Vermont. Not together.

Brian stays and Justin goes. It’s not a pattern yet.

Justin is not an unreasonable person, usually. It’s Brian’s job, and he’s fucking amazing at it, and this isn’t just any account, this is for _partner_. Justin knows all that. It makes sense. It makes a lot of sense, but it doesn’t change the fact that Brian lied, and that Justin is pissed off and then furious and then hurt. He _promised_ Justin this week, this one fucking week, and then he just didn’t do it. He picked his job over his—his whatever, whatever it is that Justin is to him, whatever he will let Justin be this week.

Justin wishes he could blame his reaction on hormones, but the truth is that it’s just everything. It’s everything—Brian and his birthday and the hustler and the millions of minutes that go by without the words _I love you_ said anywhere in them. It’s doing everything he possibly could to delude himself into believing that this was a relationship, a real one, that real people actually live like this and are happy and don’t want more.

For almost two years, Justin has lived and breathed Brian and Brian and nothing but Brian. He’s done _everything_. Now he has an entire week to himself, and what he decides is this: something has to change.

It’s clearly not going to be Brian.

So Justin will do that, too.

*

He goes back to Pittsburgh. His flight lands in the middle of the afternoon, leaving him with nothing to do, and since he doesn’t want to hang around the loft like a housewife, he calls Ethan and makes plans to meet him at the same shitty café as last time. It’s starting to seem like the place Justin has his revelations, sort of. Or if he doesn’t have them there, it’s where he puts them into words, makes them tangible, like the first stroke of paint on a stark white canvas.

Ethan is the anti-Brian, Justin decided once. He’s sweet and sincere and romantic, and if he were going to rip Justin’s heart out, he’d do it slowly and gently and smile the whole time. Justin loves Ethan, and sometimes wishes he could be in love with him, too.

“Wait, wait,” Ethan says around a mouthful of BLT. “You still haven’t told him?”

“No,” Justin answers, in kind of a pissy tone of voice. “Is there some reason I should have?”

Ethan laughs a little, mockingly. “Uh, where do I start?”

Justin shakes his head. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, which is ridiculous, of course, because he brought it up.

“Okay, okay. Fine,” Ethan says, holding up his hands like surrender. “No more mentions of Brian.”

“Thank you,” Justin says tightly, taking a ferocious bite out of his previously-untouched club sandwich. It’s even worse than he’d thought it would be, but he figures he should get used to eating crappy food that can be bought on a single parent’s budget. This will be his life for the foreseeable future.

“How’s everything else?” Ethan asks after a little while. There are lots of ways that question could be interpreted, Justin thinks, but Ethan clearly means only one.

“The miracle of life,” he answers. “What a fucking joke.”

Ethan grins. “Succinct as ever, Justin.”

“It’s _ridiculous_.”

“I think it’s incredible.”

“Well you’re not the one who has to deal with it,” Justin snaps, and he hadn’t realized until just then how goddamn angry he was. Is. “What the hell am I going to do?”

“What do you mean?” Ethan asks, his brow furrowing like something out of a movie, an actor playing confused.

“I mean, how am I going to deal with a kid? I hate children! Christ.”

Ethan rolls his eyes. “You do not. You’re great with Molly. I’ve seen you two.”

“I _do_ , though. And Molly is different. For one thing, she’s my sister, I fucking have to love her, and she’s not even five years younger than me. How am I supposed to—”

“Brian will help you.” There is absolute conviction in Ethan’s voice, and Justin kind of wants to laugh at him. Ethan is so sure, even though he’s never even met Brian. Maybe _because_ he’s never met Brian.

“I don’t—no, Ethan,” Justin replies, still angry, but less energetically so. “Just no. Brian is not going to know about this.”

“What are you talking about? He’s the father.” Ethan pauses mid-bite. “Right?”

“Yeah,” Justin answers quietly. “I mean, I think so. I think he has to be.”

“Are you sure? Is there a chance—”

“I don’t bottom with anybody else, so. But that’s not—that’s not what I meant.” Justin takes a deep breath, pushing the remains of the food around his plate with his fingers like a little kid. This is another one of those things he’s going to have to stop doing. He has an example to set. “I’m not telling him.”

“It’s his kid, too, Justin,” Ethan says, and that’s just the kind of thing Justin expects to hear him say, it’s the kind of thing he _goes_ to Ethan to hear, but today he just can’t. Can’t deal with it.

“Well I’m the one doing all the goddamn work,” Justin says, not meeting Ethan’s eyes. “I’m the one who has to deal with everything.”

Outside the café, it’s beginning to get darker, afternoon slipping steadily into night. Brian will go back to the loft soon. He knows that Justin’s flight landed today. Justin wonders if he’ll care that Justin’s bags are there but Justin isn’t, wonders if it will hurt Brian at all that Justin’s first thought was to be somewhere he knows Brian is not.

“I kept thinking,” Justin says suddenly. “I kept thinking that he’d—you know, that he’d wake up one day and love me. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or six months from now. But sometime. He’d—he’d say things, sometimes, and I’d think, oh, okay, that’s how it’s going to be now, it’ll be better. But I was just fooling myself. He doesn’t love me.”

Sometimes Justin surprises himself.

“I think he does.” Ethan is nothing if not earnest. It would be comforting, if it weren’t so fucking annoying.

“You don’t know him. He likes having me around. He’s—used to me. I’m convenient.” It hurts, of course, but it’s true.

“It’s more than that,” Ethan protests, leaning forward, sandwich forgotten.

“I don’t think so,” Justin mutters. “Anyway it doesn’t matter now, whether he does or doesn’t—it just doesn’t matter.”

“You really don’t think so?” And, okay, forget earnest: if there is one thing Ethan is, it’s fucking persistent.

“For fuck’s sake, Ethan. If he loves me, and he acts like this? If he can be in love with me and buy me a goddamn hustler for my birthday, then I don’t want him to be.”

Ethan looks at him levelly for a long time, and Justin knows he is thinking of his own present to Justin—a CD of Ethan playing beautiful, romantic music, music that made Justin want to sing and cry and be better than what he was. “You never told me that,” he says finally.

“Yeah, well.” Justin is quiet for a while. “I can’t tell him this, Ethan. I can’t.”

*

Ethan looks completely out of place in Babylon. He’s hot enough, sure, even in his horrible ribbed turtleneck and thrift-store leather jacket, but he’s utterly lacking in the vicious instinct that the club, and its patrons, thrive on.

“Are you sure about this?” he asks for what must be the fiftieth time.

“Jesus, Ethan. He couldn’t even buy me flowers for my birthday, what the fuck do you think he’d do with a kid?” It’s not really an answer.

“He has a kid,” Ethan points out.

“Yeah,” Justin snorts. “And he’s totally unconflicted about that. Good example.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do. But—Ethan, this is different. Donating sperm to a couple of dykes is not the same as knocking up the twink who stalked you for six months.”

The shifting lights can make it hard to see, but Justin can read the expression on Ethan’s face loud and clear. “You don’t really think that’s how he sees you, do you?” Justin is quiet. “Jesus, Justin,” Ethan sighs.

“If he knew,” Justin says. “If he knew, he’d. He’d think I was trying to—trap him, or something. Doesn’t matter that I didn’t do it on purpose, or whatever. He’d hate me for it.”

Justin can feel eyes boring holes into his back, and he knows that if he were to turn around, right now, Michael would be staring at him furiously, outraged and ridiculously protective for no reason at all.

Justin does what he has to do.

“Please,” he says. “Ethan.”

“I still think—”

“Ethan, just fucking do it already,” he says, and the words are angry but the truth is that Justin is just too tired to care.

And Ethan has never been anything but a good friend to him, so he curves his hand around the back of Justin’s neck and tilts his head forward, his lips brushing over Justin’s lightly, soft and a little bit wet. It’s chaste for a fraction of a second before Ethan deepens it, tongue dipping slowly, lazily into Justin’s mouth. He kisses Justin like they’ve done this a hundred times, like they’ll do it a hundred more. Everything Ethan does—the slow sweetness of his breaths stirring over Justin’s skin, the gentle way he curls his fingers in the ends of Justin’s short hair, the steadiness of his brown eyes trained on Justin, only on Justin—is something Brian would never do.

It’s been months since Justin kissed someone who isn’t Brian. It doesn’t feel bad, or wrong, exactly, except for all the ways it does. It’s sort of like what Justin imagines it would be like to step onto dry land after months spent at sea—the unsteadiness, the almost hallucinatory feeling of things shifting and changing, making his stomach turn and tighten.

It had to be this. It had to be this, and it had to be here, because everyone here knows the rules Brian has always lived by and the rules Justin got him to agree to, and doing this here means that it’s really, actually done.

The kiss ends. Just outside his peripheral vision, Justin imagines he can see Brian watching them.

Ethan takes his hand and guides him to the door, leading him away from the world of Babylon and Brian Kinney, and Justin makes it almost out of the alley before he throws up.

*

The next day, Michael orders him out of their lives, tells him to find a new fucking job and quit hanging around where he’s not wanted, where he’s never been wanted.

Emmett and Ted and Ben don’t exactly back Michael up, but they don’t exactly rush to Justin’s defense, either. It isn’t unexpected. Emmett and Ted have been Brian’s longer than they’ve been Justin’s, and Ben is Michael’s, so. It isn’t unexpected, which doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt.

(Deb tells Michael to keep his mouth shut and be civil to her help. She also tells Justin to bring Ethan around soon. Some things will never change.)

*

A month and a half later, and he’s starting to show. Not much, but enough, enough that he can’t quite hide it with a sweatshirt or a Liberty Diner apron. And since despite Michael’s best efforts, Justin _is_ still working at the diner and seeing all of his former friends—and Brian—every day, he’s got to find some way to get around it, because Joe Homo might not give a shit that Justin’s getting fat, but Brian will pick up on it in a second.

And Brian. Brian is. Odd.

He doesn’t really treat Justin any differently, is the thing. He’s catty and rude and patronizing, but he was all of those things when they were sleeping together, too. He’s still Brian, but without the sex. Justin doesn’t know why he thought it would be any different.

Justin could probably deal with one or the other—he could be pregnant and getting fatter every day, or Brian could be himself and a horrible bitch, and Justin would know what to do, how to get along. Together, it’s just too much.

He’s got to get out of Pittsburgh.

Justin calls his mom’s cousin in Philadelphia, this crazy hippie who they almost never talk to, and she offers him her couch for as long as he needs it. He says yes before she finishes getting the words out.

Deb cries when he tells her he’s leaving. Michael looks smug.

*

“How’s loverboy handling the news?” Brian asks abruptly, a couple of days before Justin’s due to leave.

“He’s fine with it,” Justin replies shortly from behind the counter. It’s the safest place to be, high enough to cover most of his bump and sturdy enough to catch him if he feels like he might fall.

“Really?” Brian drawls, arms stretched out across the back of the booth. Justin remembers how easily he used to fit there. “Is the magic gone already, Sunshine?”

“We’re doing the long-distance thing,” Justin lies in bored monotone designed to telegraph _you mean nothing to me, I don’t care what you think_. “We trust each other.”

“Ah. Well, there you go, Sunshine,” he says, standing and dropping a twenty on the table. “That was your first mistake.”

*

Deb throws him a little party on his last day at the Diner. It’s not much, just a cake and $50 stuffed in an envelope, but he appreciates it. Lindsey and Melanie come by, too, give him big hugs and make him promise to call if he ever needs anything. Even Ted and Emmett smile in his direction, and Justin swears he can see Emmett trying not to tear up.

Michael is in the Diner, too, but he’s not part of the party. It’s kind of ironic, because it is, after all, a going-away party, and out of all of them, Michael is definitely the happiest that Justin will be going away.

Justin’s shift finishes at five. He hands his apron to Deb. She’s not even trying to keep from crying.

“Listen to me, Sunshine,” she scolds through her tears, “you be careful, you hear me? Big cities are dangerous, and not everyone is as nice as we are—”

“He’ll be fine, Ma,” Michael says flatly. “Let him go.”

Deb whirls on him furiously. “You be quiet! You don’t know what might happen to him! And maybe if you all hadn’t been so horrible ever since the two of them—”

“Hey!” Michael protests, just as Justin says, “That’s got nothing to do with this, Deb.” It’s even true. Them being horrible has nothing to do with why he has to leave.

Ben pulls Michael away. Justin hadn’t even noticed he was there.

“Okay, Sunshine,” Deb says finally. “You be careful, and call me as soon as you get there.” She pulls him into a bone-crunching hug. He’s careful to keep his stomach angled away from hers.

He kind of can’t believe that it worked out, that he’s pulled it off. He’s going to make it. Justin is going to walk out the door and go back to Ethan’s apartment, and in the morning he will leave for Philadelphia, and none of them will ever have to know.

“Oh!” Deb calls, when he literally has one foot out the door. “Justin, you forgot your jacket!” She’s holding it out to him from the far side of the counter. Justin wouldn’t be at all surprised if she’d hidden it there, just so she’d have an excuse to call him back for one last hug.

He’s leaning across the counter, hugging her fiercely for what will probably be the last time, when the cook shouts, “Order up!” and a steaming, smelly pile of bacon and sausage and grease gets placed onto the order window inches from his head.

Justin manages to pull away from Deb before he vomits. _Being pregnant sucks_ , he thinks, and then the light-headedness hits and everything goes dark.

*

Justin wakes up in a hospital bed and doesn’t know why. Then he remembers: hugs, food, vomit, passing out. Philadelphia and Ethan and Babylon. A baby.

None of that explains why of all the fucking people in the entire fucking world, Brian fucking Kinney is sitting next to his bed.

“Morning, Sunshine,” he says casually, when he notices that Justin is awake. “Have a nice rest?”

“What are you doing here?” Justin asks, a little panicked but fighting hard not to show it.

Brian shrugs, tosses aside the magazine he’d been reading. “Hospital called me. I’m your emergency contact.”

“Oh.”

“Deb called too.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Justin repeats, the same word but very different inflection. She had no right to do that.

Brian clucks his tongue. “Don’t get angry, now, Sunshine. She was very worried. You took quite a fall.” His tone is patronizing and superior and goddamn it.

“Well I’m awake now,” Justin bites off. “So you can go.”

Brian shakes his head. “No can do. You’ve got to have someone with you at all times until you’re released. Delicate constitutions like yours require extra-special care—”

“Fuck you, Brian,” and they’re already back to this.

“Wouldn’t want to get the fiddler jealous, now would we?” Brian asks, quirking an eyebrow. “Or is that history now?”

Justin doesn’t answer. Ethan is pretty much the last topic he wants to discuss right now. His head is full of other things, like _why did you come_ and _are you staying_ and _were you always this beautiful or am I just seeing it better now._

“The doctor said you’re pregnant,” Brian says suddenly. He’s staring hard at nothing, and the part of Justin that isn’t mentally preparing for battle wonders if Brian just read his mind. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Yeah,” Justin answers simply.

“I suppose congratulations are in order.”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

“Most people would consider that being polite, I think.” Brian still isn’t looking at him. “I’m surprised your husband is letting you go now. Or letting you work, for that matter. He seems like a smotherer.”

“Fuck you, Brian. Fuck you. You know it’s yours.” Brian’s face gives the tiniest twitch, his jaw tightening under the skin. “I’m not asking you for anything, okay. But don’t do that.”

“Yeah, well. You haven’t given me much of a chance, have you?” and it’s a valid point.

“Okay,” Justin says softly. “What would you have done, then? If I had given you the chance?”

Brian is quiet.

“That’s what I thought,” Justin says, looking away. It wasn’t like he didn’t know.

*

Ethan takes him home that night, because they can’t actually _make_ him stay at the hospital a minute longer than he wants. He sleeps fitfully, and dreams of things that shift and change and curl in shades of sepia and gray.

The next morning, when he wakes up, there is a plain envelope on the mat at Ethan’s front door. It is addressed to him, in handwriting he’d know anywhere.

Inside the envelope are a key and a slip of paper.

_Philadelphia is no place to raise a kid._

It’s not _I love you_ , but it’s close enough.


End file.
